Energy Bill

May I join the Secretary of State and his Conservative opposite number in paying tribute to all those who have carried out this bit of work with mutual respect and courtesy in a businesslike way? Everyone who has participated has done so in that spirit. I thank the Ministers who led the Bill through Committee for their engagement with the issues. They did not always deliver what we wanted, but they were willing to answer questions. On one subject, they did not even deliver the document we wanted—the Government's policy on how all homes might be warm homes—although at least they promised that it was somewhere and would be seen one day. We will still be waiting. I join the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) in paying tribute to those colleagues who are not on the Front Benches. I pay tribute to them all in general, but want to single out two. Like the hon. Gentleman, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson). He is not with us at this second, but throughout his career he has been unqualifiedly unrelenting in arguing methodically and effectively on these issues. We will miss him hugely in these debates. I am sad that he has decided to step down. I also pay special tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), who served with me in Committee, as well as to my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), who has supported me and performed today—[Interruption.] And he has just come back. May I add one other name to those to whom I pay tribute? On Second Reading, David Taylor was with us and he participated in the debate. He took a great interest in this area of policy. I have not yet paid tribute to him but, on my behalf and that of my colleagues, may I add to the tributes that have been paid to him? Through his family, I want to say thank you for the efforts and contribution he made. In summary, this Bill takes some good small steps in the right direction. Although it is clearly too little and too late, the steps are welcome. It is better that we go down the road of trying to have carbon capture and storage to deal with our coal industry in the future, although it is to be regretted that we missed by just nine votes taking the opportunity to add emissions performance standards. I hope that the House of Lords gets the Bill soon enough to be able to remedy that. In the House of Lords, of course, the Government do not have a majority. I am pleased that the Government saw the need, at last, after much pressure, to put on a statutory rather than a voluntary footing for the energy companies measures to try to reduce what is colloquially called fuel poverty. It is sad that in this country so many people still pay more than 10p in the pound or £10 in £100—the definition of fuel poverty—for their fuel bills. It is sad that the target for the most vulnerable has not been met, that the number in that level of financial difficulty has gone up, and that the targets set for 2015 will not be met. I hope that the Bill will have reminded everybody to increase their efforts to deal with that problem and I regret that we were unable to win the argument to obtain a commitment to a policy that would make every home in this country a warm home over 10 years from the end of the current schemes in 2012. My colleagues and I will continue to argue for that. The greatest regret—although the Opposition parties' one success occurred in the same area—is that we did not manage to beef up the powers and effectiveness of the regulator. We achieved one success, in that the Minister of State was kind enough to recognise our request in Committee to require the energy companies to change the rules about pricing so that they must tell consumers in advance of any changes. The Government accepted that request and today we have amended the Bill to put that mechanism in it. That is welcome. It is frustrating that other things that we think would have helped hugely to even out the balance between consumer and energy company—allowing easy comparison between tariffs, limiting the number of tariffs, stopping the veto power of the energy companies and showing, to expose the issue, how much profit the energy companies make from the individual consumer—have not been adopted. We will return to those issues. The Bill was published on 19 November. It has taken three months to get it through the House even though there was willingness on both sides to make progress. It had its Second Reading on 7 December and left Committee on 21 January—more than a month ago. I sincerely hope that the Government will not be as dilatory in taking the Bill to the Lords and giving them the opportunity to improve it. We all understand the pressures of the last Session of a Parliament, but if the Government are serious about energy policy as a priority, we expect that to be reflected in the House of Lords. Let me end on this point. Two of the three great future challenges for our country are climate security and energy security. The third is economic security—by definition, they come together. Unless we remain absolutely clear, as Front Benchers have, that the threat to the planet from climate change caused by human activities is so serious that we need always to take precautionary action, a much more serious position will face the next Parliament, the next Government—whoever they are—and the Governments after them. Front Benchers have a duty to stand together on this issue, and our friends on the Conservative Benches must be tough with their colleagues who do not appear to understand the urgency of these matters. The Government, to their credit, understand the urgency. They came to the issue late, but they now understand where we need to go. I hope that people will understand in future that we need not just to legislate effectively and in advance of issues on the energy agenda, but policies that will change the use, abuse and waste of energy in this country so that we conserve it better and become far more efficient, as well as policies that will move us to renewables as fast as possible. I hope that, if that happens, energy policy will not be so controversial and that the risks to society will not be so great in the years ahead.